Thursday, May 15, 2008

Cause, but no effect

One of the things I find endearing about characters in silver age Superman comics is their incredible naivety and lack of awareness of the world around them, not to mention their entirely disproportionate response to situations.

Jimmy Olsen tries to drum up publicity for the Daily Planet by pretending to be an alien from Mars, because he's seen the success the newspaper made out of old hoaxes. He's perhaps momentarily forgotten that these days Superman drops by to give them daily exclusives better than any dumb hoax.

And then in order to help a girl become more popular at college, does Lois give her a makeover? No, she gets Superman to pretend the girl is his secret girlfriend, thus making her the target of any criminal in the world who might want to get back at him. In just the way he uses as an excuse not to get serious with Lois.

And that's not even counting the occasion where Superman fights a villain with ice powers by moving the Sun closer to the Earth to make it too hot for him. Overreact much?

Hey, it's been a long time, it's me staredcraft. Hey you have GOT to read Booster GOld #9 just to let you know! It's one of the best issues with Kimiyo in AGES (I'm telling you this here because I don't know how else to contact you)

My all-time favorite example of this kind of thing being the Superfriends episode where the Legion of Doom actually take into account how the JLA overreact to every little thing and use that to facilitate massive climate change so that a group of allied evil aliens can take over the world.

Seriously. They planned on Hal Jordan moving the entire planet closer to the sun in order to save it from a giant comet rather than - say - redirecting it by throwing meteors at it or some such.

I suspect someone was reading the second volume of the Showcase Presents: Superman Family!

The story I really loved was the one where Superman "protects" Lois by turning her morbidly obese, and the bizarre hijinx that follow, such as her collapsing a car, and Superman, who tows galaxies with a chain, noting how much heavier Lois is!